TESLA
by naiad8
Summary: TESLA and the Electric Chair is on it's fifteenth major world tour. But the star has special medical needs, and there's only one doctor he wants. Helen Magnus needs capital to continue her foundation's work on orphan diseases, and she needs an escape from the sad shell her life has become. One last chance to get things right.
1. Chapter 1

Helen stood in the wings, staring out at the incredible show, feeling giddy like a teenager. Nick was surrounded by crackling blue electricity, the air was alive with static, and the music was deafening with a deep bass that thrummed through her like a second pulse. He played his guitar with nimble fingers and smiled his manic grin at the screaming, crying, enraptured audience whose energy filled the stadium more so that even the ten thousand watts that Nick manipulated over their heads in writhing, screaming glory as it cascaded into grounds behind him in a showy display that should not thrill her as much as it did.

He was a master of showmanship, a damn good musician, and she was his doctor. Should be just the tour doctor, who was supposed to keep him healthy and alive, as per the label's contract. She should be watching his skin tone, his sweat, his pupils, determining if he was healthy enough to continue on. Instead, she was riveted by that damned smile, and spending far too much time looking at his arse in those tight leather trousers and wondering if he was going to take off that cravat this time and throw it into the audience. Or at her. That was not at all professional.

The music calmed suddenly, sweet and deceivingly gentle for a song about a vampire.

 _Could this be the answer_

 _Uncorrupted carmine red_

 _Voices keep resounding_

 _In my dazed bewildered head_

 _Have I found myself eternity_

 _Someone has heard my prayers_

 _Now I'll become divine_

 _Have I found myself divinity_

 _I'm no longer a slave_

 _To the vicious hands of time_

A burst of crackling red fire above Nick's head, and the music erupted again with the screams and chants of the audience. She shuddered, half seduced and half terrified.

She done her job two days ago, plunging a needle of epinephrine into his chest during rehearsal as a live wire had severed and shocked him unconscious, his heart stopping. She'd desperately worked to save him and when he'd taken a huge breath and looked up at her with wild eyes and a smug grin, she'd bent her head and kissed him so hard he'd almost fainted again. She'd disappeared afterward, hiding in the streets of São Paulo, working at a medical clinic, just as she spent her days at most stops along the way. She spent these hours justifying to herself why she was doing this tour, why she was giving transfusions and planning the diet of a single, wealthy rockstar instead of working at her foundation.

She was not supposed to remember what it felt like to be in love.

She'd been seventeen once. A levels early, snuck into Medical at Oxford with a smile and a legacy and more than a little genius. She'd met a fifteen year old prodigy, Dmitri Nikola Tesla, yes that Tesla. His great grandnephew who was half convinced he was his ancestor's reincarnation.

He certainly had the ego for it.

She'd rarely met anyone as intelligent and driven as herself, and this skinny, scrawny Serbian boy with a slight accent, wild eyes and slicked back hair made her seem merely mildly smart. He made her better, brighter. He was doubling in music composition and electrical engineering, and she was in love. He talked with her late into the nights and watched the stars with her, he composed complex sonatas that brought her to tears, he brought her coffee at three AM before finals and he insisted she call him Nick while he called her, "ljubavi".

But he never ever touched her. She decided that she wasn't his type, and tried not to think about him when she touched herself for release.

Then, he disappeared for weeks, and came back drawn and pale. Confessed he was a vampire - sort of. He needed regular transfusions to treat thalassemia, an inherited blood disease. She helped him recover, researched like mad, and realized that this was her calling. Rare diseases. Orphan syndromes. Helping people with the mysteries of their own bodies. He was her muse, and he claimed she was his. He wrote her a symphony at the end of their second year, and she got thoroughly pissed on cheap wine and kissed him.

She left on a humanitarian tour to Africa the next day, and didn't talk to him for months. In Mauritania, she met John Druitt, a Doctors Without Borders volunteer with an impeccable pedigree of English aristocracy that her father would love. He was a philosophy graduate student, also at Oxford, though they'd never crossed paths. Older, handsome and tall and very very interested in her.

She lost her virginity in a sandy tent in the Magreb, and she swore it was romantic and exciting and exactly what she wanted.

The first time she saw Nick again, she had just opened her eyes from John kissing her senseless in front of her rooms at school. His face looked so pale, his eyes wet and shining. He ran.

The next time she saw him he acted like nothing had ever changed. He was his normal, snarky brilliant self - with a hard shell that was new and disconcerting.

John had hated him. And the feeling was mutual. John yelled at her to forget the boy, find better friends, friends that could help her career. She even walked in once on John with his hands wrapped around Nick's throat, and she screamed bloody murder about it. Nick snuck around to find her when John was far away. Nick whispered that John was evil, underneath. Cold and rotten inside, more a vampire than he was.

She should have listened.


	2. Chapter 2

The third encore was always a cover, and this was one of his favorites. His voice was still full enough, and he let Henry get in some good solos on the bass and Sally play her favorite drum tricks while Nigel worked the last of the kinks out of his new iPad synth app to dazzling fulfillment.

Born to be kings, we're the princes of the universe  
Here we belong  
Born to be kings, princes of the universe  
Fighting and free, got your world in my hand  
I'm here for your love and I'll make my stand  
We were born to be princes of the universe, of the universe, of the universe  
Of the universe of the universe

The applause and shouting was deafening, and even aching and drenched with sweat he was he was brimming with energy.

Sao Paolo loved him. He could have played encores all night, but Sally was nursing a cold, Henry was eager to get back to his wife and Nigel wanted to disappear to meet that pretty little bonita he'd picked up in Rio. He took a final bow and set of the last of the pyrotechnics and fireworks that would send the crowd home.

Helen wasn't backstage. She never was, even though he had glimpsed her looking at him earlier in the show. He wasn't sure if she just didn't want to see him at his final moment of triumph each night, or if she was too jealous of the crowd of hangers on he'd have to dodge through, female hangers-on especially. He had not been lacking for female attention for many years - though he'd taken much less advantage of it than Helen had been allowed to believe. Experimentation lost it's appeal once one achieved mastery, after all.

He grinned and chatted his way through all the hubbub of a typical concert night, aiming to get backstage to get off his kit and then back to the hotel. Where Helen was no doubt waiting for his exam, as she was every night. He stood in his dressing room, and stripped out of jacket and cravat and leather pants. If he was lucky, she would be waiting for him. Perhaps not the in way he'd fantasized about for two decades, but likely with a syringe and a stethoscope and a wry and cutting wit that turned him on more that the curve of her arse in those heeled boots she liked to wear.

In less than an hour, he was strolling in to the thirty third floor penthouse of the InterContinental, and trying not to remember how Helen looked earlier that afternoon - the focused intensity she'd shown her work at the clinic where he'd gone to spy on her - not for the first time. He tried very hard not to think about that focus turning to him, to them, to her body over his, around his, her lips on his again. And the memory of that kiss…dammit, he was half-hard, and she, she was right there.

"Hello Nick."

He swallowed thickly at the sound of her voice saying his name, taking her in legs in that demure little librarian's skirt, the jewel-toned green silk blouse, the lustrous brown of her curls loose against her collarbones and no shoes on her surprisingly dainty feet. No white coat tonight. In fact, she looked almost ready to head out for a date. Panic swirled in his gut that she'd met someone, and his mouth ran off without him. "Hello, beautiful. Going somewhere without me?" No snarky tone to try and escape from that one. Jabote.

She smiled softly - a real smile, not the polite pleasantry she wore so often, and shook her head in denial. "No, just the typical night, making sure you're still alive." He felt it like a kick in the gut, and years of buried longing banged at the wall he'd built around them, the cracks gaping open. Cracks that had been forming since she'd agreed to his desperate proposal of her as his tour doctor and his vivid imagination had supplied him with endless visions of her finally in his bed, him finally in her heart. She was here, after years of dreaming of her - standing in the luxury of his suite, the soft lights of the city in the picture window behind her, the silk of the bed sheets shimmering off to her left, and a look in her eyes that he'd never seen before.

"I missed you," he whispered, still feeling very out of control. He tried to pull back on his customary mask. "There was far too much silicone on display backstage and not enough wit for my taste. You, my ljubavi, are always a breath of fresh air."

She sucked in a breath and he realized his mistake.

"You haven't called me that in a very long time." Her voice held something soft and vulnerable and he tried to stomp on the hope that rose up in him with addictive insistence.

"I…I…" he looked at her, her blue eyes staring at him, her face holding the wisdom of her years and the pain of her experience, but still the same face he'd been in love with more than half his life. "I'm either feeling very brave, or very stupid, but…you must know."

"Know what?" she pressed, stepping closer to him, one hand coming up to press against his chest. He wore only a thin black tee, not his usual layers, and her touch almost burned. His heart was racing, and his mind was blank. His mouth opened and closed and the moment dragged on, and on, until he watched the light in her eyes dim and the curl of her smile rise in resignation.

"Right. Well, let me get my instruments, and I'll give you your check up." she turned toward her bag on top of a chest of drawers and stepped away from him.

He exhaled softly, feeling the loss of her touch against his chest like the loss of a limb. He'd screwed up, again. Waited too long, again. He somehow sat himself down on the end of the bed and felt exhaustion seep over him, tears threatening behind his closed eyes.

He felt her close again, the swish of her skirt, the scent of the jasmine soap she'd used since university - the same soap he'd first gotten her for Christmas the second year he'd known her. The same scent that had followed him into every good dream he'd had since.

He opened his eyes and stared up at her, her stethoscope around her neck and her eyes averted, no…staring at him. Staring at his chest, his stomach, farther down where his erection had only partially subsided within his black jeans. He reached up and cupped her cheek, and her eyes snapped to his, her pupils wide and dark.

"You have to know I love you, Helen. I've loved you forever."

The words hung in the charged air, time seemed frozen, and then she leaned forward and he opened his mouth to capture her lips, sliding his hand into her hair and finally really tasting her.

The kiss wasn't chaste to start with, and quickly grew hotter than hell, the perfect balance of lips and tongue and teeth. She straddled him there on the bed, knees on either side of his hips, her skirt hiked up high on her thighs. One hand remained entangled in her hair, tipping her head so that he could press open mouth kisses to her jaw, her neck, her collarbone that had teased him with its perfection since Oxford. The other hand stroked over the skin of her upper thighs, teasing up and down, getting close to heaven without crossing a line he wasn't sure she was ready to cross. He tried his best to be a gentleman, after all that she had seen.

She had no such qualms however, and she ground down against his erection with merciless enthusiasm, moaning and sighing enough to make his cock throb with every sound, until he was very sure he was going to erupt into his jeans like the inept teen he never got a chance to be. The scent of her teased him, thrilled him, and he wondered if somehow by some miracle she wanted him just as much as he'd always wanted her.

"Touch me, Niko, please!"

He growled, actually growled in response, that name hit him somewhere deep and hot, better than lightning in his blood. His fingers pulled aside the cotton of her knickers and thrust inside without preamble, feeling her soaking wet for him, slick and hot and so damn tight his cock began to weep with need.

"Yes!" she breathed against his ear, her hands running up and down his chest and abs beneath the shirt she'd shoved up under his armpits when he was otherwise occupied. Her nails came out to play, scraping over his skin and he sucked in a breath, fighting back by twisting his hand and curling two long, guitar-calloused fingers within her depths while his thumb brushed against the high, tight nub of her clit.

She keened, rolling her hips and riding his hand and he let go of her hair, slipping instead under the silk of her blouse and pinching her left nipple between his finger and thumb. His cock complained bitterly, painfully, but he couldn't have cared less. He was watching her face, her eyes closed and mouth open, pressed against his shoulder, the puffs of her panting breath the best music he'd ever heard.

He thrust his fingers inside of her hard and fast, wanting to watch her fly, flicking her clit as he pinched her nipple, trying to learn her as he would coax a new and fascinating instrument to give him its best tone. She rocked with him, against him, then she sucked in a breath and her eyes flew open, string straight at him while she breathed out, "Nick…oh God, Niko, I'm….I….." she let out a breathy scream and her walls clamped down tight against his fingers, coating him with more thick wetness as she climaxed.

His ears were ringing, his vision almost blurry with exultation at watching her, hearing her come for him, on his fingers. After mere moments, though her eyes were still a bit glazed, her lips curved in a smile, and her hand stroked over the hard bulge of his cock, flicking open the button of his jeans. He groaned softly, letting himself imagine that he might be inside of her soon, when a knock sounded, loud and frantic, at the front door of the massive suite, echoing though into the bedroom for which he'd neglected to close the door.

"Doc? Doc, are you in there with Nick? I'm sorry to bug you but Erica hasn't been able to keep anything down for the whole day, and I'm really worried about her. Could you take a quick look at her when you are done?"

The silence was filled with the harsh sounds of her breath as she recovered from her orgasm. Her voice was almost calm when she called out, "I'll be there soon, Henry. Try to get her to lie down with her feet up till I get there."

"Thanks, Doc. You're a gem." Henry replied, and Nick laid back down on the bed with a dramatic thump, groaning loudly.

"Why did I ever pick up that hair ball from the subway? Why did I let him con me into letting him bring his bride, his pregnant bride, on a tour. We are supposed to be rock stars, not a piddling nursery school!"

She chuckled low and warm, and he felt the zipper on his jeans lower suddenly, bringing his slightly flagging erection roaring back to full mast. Yanking at the loops of his waistband, she pulled down his jeans and pants down too, freeing his erection enough for it to pop up, eagerly pointing straight at her poised over him, still straddling his thighs. Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped in a way that made him just a wee bit smug, but once her fingers wrapped around his cock he was pretty much speechless with the sensation.

"You took Henry in because he is the best bass player you every heard, at least the best one who still puts up with you."

"No, he's the…the best. Period." She stroked him from base to tip, swirling finger around the very tip of him and he bucked his hips up into her hand, chasing sensation and breathing hard.

"And you brought him to me for his hypertrichosis because he wouldn't go on stage with you otherwise."

"If I'm the vampire, he had no desire to be the….fuck woman, are you trying to….fuck…werewolf…." She climbed down and knelt between his knees and blew air over the wet tip of him, smiling up at him and arching an eyebrow.

"Sorry, my dear. I've no desire to shag a werewolf, just my vampire."

He would have rolled his eyes at her horrible quip, but really it was all he could do to slam his eyes shut at the sight of her engulfing his cock in the warm, wet perfection of her mouth, otherwise he was going to erupt in an embarrassingly short amount of time. Her tongue stroked the back of him as she moved up and down, her hand wrapped around the base of him, her thumb drifting teasingly over his balls. It was the best blowjob he'd ever had, and he wasn't sure if it was because she was just that good at it, or simply because it was her.

He slipped his hands into her hair, his nails scratching gently along her scalp and she hummed her contentment with that. He didn't push, tried to tame his hips into obedience and let himself feel every glorious wet stroke of her mouth on him. Too far, far far too fast he was at the white edge, and he tried to pull her away but she put both hands into gripping his hips, swallowing him deep and he couldn't hold on, coming hard and long, spurting into her throat with a gasping groan and white fire that ran up his spine and burst behind his eyelids.

He lay back panting for breath as he opened to eyes to her standing from the floor, her tongue licking her lips and a pleased grin on her face. His cock twitched and he wondered just how fast he could get hard again and fuck her senseless, but there was a buzz from a phone laying on the bedside table and Helen's eyes flicked to look at it and she sighed.

"I…I need to go see Erica. Her morning sickness is worrying and I don't want her dehydrated enough to go to hospital."

He blew out a breath threw his teeth. "I…Henry would be useless then. And I shudder to think about finding a replacement for this tour who I wouldn't want to eviscerate."  
She rolled her eyes, and started to smooth down her skirt, brushing her fingers through the mess he'd made of her hair. "I doubt you could find another like him if you walked through every subway in the world - he is a prodigy." She paused, one foot half in one of the black heels that seemed to materialize out of in air. "You are a good man, Nick. Even if you would deny it with your last breath. You always have been."

He stared at her, his heart tight with hope. "You make me better. You always have. I hope you always will." That was as far as he could go. Any further and he was risking falling off a cliff that he couldn't save himself from.

She stared at him, her foot still half in her shoe, as close to befuddled as he'd ever seen her, a blush staining her cheeks. "I….I do have to go back to my foundation someday, Nikola. I needed some time away, time to recover, but…"

His chest clutched painful as he slowly shut down, rebuilding walls and turning on a false front of nonchalance as fast as he could. "Of course. Your talents are wasted on a few mere rock stars. Go ahead, go see the bride of the werewolf. I know you are aching to fix her." He lay still, staring at the ceiling rather than watching Helen put on her shoes and make herself presentable. He didn't fix his clothes or cover himself - he wouldn't let her deny what they'd done or what would have happened if they hadn't been interrupted.

There was a overpowering silence between them, only the slight crinkle and swish of clothing and her muffled steps on the thick carpet as she walked toward the door. It opened but there was a pause, a long pause, long enough that he finally looked toward the door to see her standing there, looking at him, a small smile on her lips.

"You must know, Nikola."

She turned and walked away, closing the door to the bedroom with a thump. He scrambled to his elbows and thought about chasing her down, making her say the words, but he knew it wasn't the right time. But he wouldn't wait much longer.  
_

He'd waited too long once. Time seemed a very different thing when you were seventeen. She was his best friend, and he knew she was the love of his life. He didn't want to screw this up. He'd barely talked to her all summer, except for a few postcards back and forth from Africa to the garage space in Peckham he rented during the summers to save money while he worked on his third patent. Well, he should have been working on those cross integrated circuits, but instead he was ignoring the local librarian's disapproving looks and working his way through the library's books on sexual response in the female, and the occasional romance novel to try and figure out how to be the kind of man that she deserved, the kind of man she would keep by her side.

Too much research and not enough action. That had been his problem at seventeen.

He'd come to her room to greet her, to sweep her off her feet and show off all of the knowledge he'd acquired. He'd come to seduce her into loving him at least a little like he loved her, madly, passionately, once in a lifetime love.

He'd found her being kissed breathless by a long-haired giant that made his skin crawl.

He ran. Too much a skinny coward, too hurt by her betrayal. It took him years to realize that she thought he'd not wanted her. More years to think that maybe, just maybe, she had once wanted him too.

The tall ape was named John. He was smart. He was violent. John had warned him away from Helen more than once with threats, and more than once with fists to his gut. He never told her, but he should have.

She was pregnant when they graduated. He knew before she did. He knew her habits too well, and he knew when she stopped eating and started her mornings green and bilious, she was carrying another man's child. He helped her get through those months of her pregnancy, months when Johnny had disappeared without a trace. He helped arrange all bureaucracy to have her delay the start to medical school. He helped support her when she told her disappointed father. He was there when Ashley had been born, held her hand through the labor and not complained at the bruises from her grip. He'd held Ashley and fallen in love with her, this perfect piece of Helen. He went home from the hospital to take a shower, and to collect the ring box from his dresser drawer, knowing that now was the time to ask her.

And John was there in her room, holding Ashley and smiling at Helen when he returned. He was too late, again.

This time he'd left. He'd crossed an ocean to get away from the pain of her, of the child that he wouldn't raise and the woman who didn't want him. Music school, dropped out when he got a contract. His first single hit number one the same day Ashley turned one. He missed her first birthday, but he sent a gift. He sent a gift every birthday, every Christmas. Helen sent pictures, always of Ashley, never of herself.

He came to visit as a surprise for Ashley's sixth birthday. He was there for a tour, had Wembley Stadium sold out the night before. But all his triumph came crashing down to nothing at the sight of Helen's black eye and bruised lip. He yelled, and she cried, and he begged her to leave.

He got them to Vancouver. Then there was the news from London of the prostitutes beaten to death. The police chase. The crash. John Druitt was gone. But Helen was broken. He left her to heal, feeling his presence was painful to her. He watched from afar. Funding her foundation from behind the scenes. Taking Ashley to lunch and buying her that first leather jacket.

He'd missed too much. But he didn't trust his sense of timing anymore. And once again, he'd waited too long. James Watson was a very nice, very brilliant doctor. Nikola had tried very hard to hate him. But he was good for Helen, and good for Ashley. Nikola faded farther into the background, and become more famous, or infamous, with each hit written from heartbreak. It wasn't worth the trade.


End file.
